Just Pretend
by Ijoan
Summary: After Hermione's political quest to help veelas with their mate problem causes Blaise to become hospitalized, Draco decides to get revenge. He lets the world know that he's a veela and Hermione's his mate. Then he proceeds to use her own system against her in a complicated game of pretend.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing and receive no profit from the writing of this story.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing and receive no profit from the writing of this story.

**Summary:** After Hermione's political quest to help veelas with their mate problem causes Blaise to become hospitalized, Draco decides to get revenge. He lets the world know that he's a veela and Hermione's his mate. Then he proceeds to use her ideals against her in a complicated game of pretend.

Just Pretend

Chapter One

Five years ago Draco left England and all the post-war drama behind. Despite his mother's pleas he refused to return for Lucius's trial. The change in acceptable political values and minister prompted his father to crack open detailed files on members of the Wizengamot. After a few strategic correspondences and donations, the Wizengamot sentenced the older Malfoy to twenty years of house arrest. With multiple residences all over Great Britain and Europe, the whole arrangement felt more like a vacation, especially when nothing prevented old friends from making house calls.

After hearing that verdict, Draco's contact with his parents became limited to polite birthday and holiday cards. And in those five years of traveling everywhere between France and Russia, Draco never imagined himself again in England, staring at a poster on a bulletin board in St. Mungo's.

VEELAS ARE JUST LIKE YOU!

SAVE A LIFE. SUPPORT EQUALITY.

VOTE **YES** ON PROPOSAL E254

Underneath the flashing letters a group of beautiful veela and cute wizarding children played. Draco tore down the poster and crumpled it into a ball. Finding no suitable place to dispose of it, he tossed it out of a window. So what if a muggle found a piece of Granger's filthy propaganda?

He stalked down the hall, trying to keep himself calm and catching glimpses of his reflection in glass. Hair trimmed short and swept back, face angled but smooth, and clothes expensive but understated: he looked respectable. Matured. A whole new person. He also looked very, very angry.

Draco stopped in front of a tan door, room number 253. That number. The edges of Draco's mouth twitched at the irony. Ignoring the hard glare of a plump mediwitch sitting on a chair outside the room, he took a deep breath and composed himself before entering.

Draco momentarily froze at the sight that greeted him inside. The contrast of the big, white pillows and the long, limp hair hanging over Blaise's eyes made him look thin and ragged. The paling of his dark skin and bruising around the eyes aged Blaise by ten years. Then the glint of metal on Blaise's wrist caught Draco's eye. Lying on a white starched bed in an otherwise empty room, Blaise wore an incarcerband, a silver bracelet usually reserved for criminals awaiting trial. It limited movement and prevented escape.

Blaise raised his arm in a wave. The incarcerband glinted in the light of the half open window. "They're scared that I might do something."

"Would you?" When standing outside the room, Draco planned on using more tactful first words after a five year absence.

Blaise shrugged.

Draco groaned and pulled at the short ends of his hair before sagging to the floor in a crouch, looking tousled. "Why?"

"I had nothing left. My friendships had withered away. Then Pansy left me. I was fired. And after a while I realized I had nothing in my life that even moderately mattered anymore, so—I didn't think you'd actually come."

"Your mother came last morning and delivered this." Draco rummaged in the pocket of his black robe and held out between two fingers a wrinkled letter. Folded and unfolded so many times and with such fervor in the past twelve hours that it looked close to falling apart.

Blaise looked away. "Ah. That. I figured you were the only one left. Never mind that we hadn't talked in ages. We'd been great friends back in school. It's kind of embarrassing to think of that letter now. Sentimental, Hufflepuff mush. If I thought that I'd see you again, I wouldn't have written half the things in there."

_Not friends, allies_. The thought came unbidden. Back then Draco felt no need for friendships, but out of the old Slytherin crowd Blaise deserved that title the most.

A long moment passed as Blaise's fingers picked at the incarcerband, a device used only for criminals and—Draco straightened, looking much more composed. "I didn't spend a fortune on emergency portkeys so you could avoid the question, Blaise. Why the hell did you try to kill yourself? _Why_?" And of course Healers used the incarcerband to keep patients from hurting themselves.

Blaise looked at Draco. Then his gaze roamed over the soft blue walls of the room before settling on the window. "Why?" Blaise wet his lips. "Her name's Florenza. She's a veela."

If Draco entered Blaise's room angry, he left livid. Draco knew that the bushy-haired, know-it-all Granger had been pushing something she called the "Equality Acts" for the past three years. He knew that veelas made up a large portion of her recent legislative proposals. Draco even knew of the veela that claimed Blaise as her mate and systematically destroyed his life so he'd have no one to turn to but _her_. Granger's E253 helped with all of that. What he hadn't known, what he couldn't even _believe_ were Granger's ideas for E254. That's what pushed Blaise over the edge.

_No_. Draco thought. _The answer to the "why" isn't Florenza or even the Equality Acts. Her name's Granger. And she's going to get a taste of her own medicine_.


End file.
